melkathi

World of Darkness Crusader Kings 4 DLC 45

So Trump tried to ban TikTok and got banned from TikTok instead?

If I ever get tried by a jury of my peers: "We the jury find the defendant not guilty as no Mordheim screenshots were found at the scene of the crime."

You haven't posted the paper here, how can we, your obsidian peers review it?

Apparently it is only the account though and not he as a person?

So since my understanding of US law is limited to some brief stuff mentioned during some international law lectures I had to attend and mainly comes from watching a lot of Law & Order, Boston Legal and the odd legal drama like Runaway Jury or Legally Blond, are those "conspiracy crossing state lines" charges from the Chicago Seven applicable here?

Well, you are a prime candidate for the Battle Brothers fan re-education camp

Quite possibly. The weird bobble head people are probably the main reason I didn't try the game.

Yup

A friend send me this one and it took me a moment to get it:

British burglars are a real threat for Florida Man's fame, having butt dialed the police during a burglary: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/08/uk/unlucky-burglars-pocket-dial-gbr-scli-intl/index.html

Since you read CNN you probably have found the article already, but posting it just in case: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/08/politics/capitol-police-officer-killed/index.html

I'm putting this here even though it should go in the politics discussion. Today I read a post by Hurlshot talking about stimulus money being paid for through tax payers taxes. That made me think of the stimulus money I could apply for here in Greece. I could apply for an in part return of my advance taxes. This would have to be repaid at low interest later. Now you may wonder what I mean with advance taxes. Back in 2015 with the financial crisis, the then government, under pressure by the EU troika, implemented an advance payment of taxes. You paid your income tax and a 100% advance on next year's income tax. Basically in 2015 we paid all our taxes twice. Since then we no longer pay taxes for the actual year, we always pay taxes as an advance for the next year. The income tax I am paying now with the paperwork for 2020 is in actuality the income tax for 2021. It is funny, but no other nation in the world has citizens who pay taxes this punctual. Anyway, instead of a stimulus, I can have part of that advance payment returned. But I'll have to repay it with interest. So I'll pay interest on taxes on income that I may have next year. Thanks for the stimulus. Also what I did today: type out this post.

No police in tactical gear, but quite a number of protesters

It took me a long time to figure out what poe2 was. "There is a game about Poe?" "There is a second game about Poe?" "Wait, that is an acronym... Planet of... epilepsy warnings? of Equestrians?" "Got it! Planet of Edgar. Clever word play with the acronym there. Who came up with that? I want to play that game." Then it clicked. I have to admit, a bit disappointed.

It gets worse. There is always Chapterhouse Dune. But just when you thought you had reached the epitome of bad, the son writes the prequel garbage. Then again nothing can protect people's work after death. Terry Pratchett thought having his hard drive publicly destroyed would do it. Then they brought out The Watch series. If people want to piss on your grave they will, even if they aren't your kids.

Nothing they did ever was a last hurrah. Biden already said he wanted to heal the divide. So once again, they will forgive and move on, and in doing so prove to the far right they just need to bide their time for the next thing.

It doesn't turn into Bolter porn. The second story is rather stretchy though. Farrer did try to make the imperium function though. Show it as the ugly place it is, but also show it as something more than a breeding pit for cannon fodder.

Is it this version? Margaret Carroux's translation was fantastic. What Dune books are you reading?

Played some Iron Harvest because it has an actual demo you can download and play!!!

The spren are... problematic in the way Sanderson has written them. The simple spren are just world building. The intelligent Spren he tries to show as alien to the material plane. So he writes the curious ones, like Sylphrena or Pattern, similar to children in their demeanor. That makes them quickly turn into comic relief that can feel out of place and distracting. The other honorspren, like Notum, haughty and stern feel more appropriate. Until the trial, but that could be seen as Adolin's human influence on Notum. Timbre, who doesn't talk but communicates with Venli through humming, works better. Blended is the best written spren. Her speech is sufficiently different from humans. (She would stop talking at this point) She has this thing about is and are. So instead of saying that people will accept and cling to easy explanations instead of checking if they are true, she states: Easy explanations are. It isn't overdone, so it works. Just enough of it to make you halt and think "shouldn't there be more to this sentence?" It works because being a creature of the cognitive realm, where abstract ideas have form and are people, it makes sense that she refers to them as such. So she doesn't say "I am stupid" but "My stupidity is". You aren't honorable, your honor is - and with all those honorspren walking around, she might even be able to point it out to you.

Post it all, let Gorth sort it out? Sounds like a plan.

I identify as a politically homeless leftist - meaning, my family left "the party" as those masquerading as "left" and representing the party are immoral charlatans with only their self interest at heart. Political correctness by itself is not something I have an issue with. That is, I have no issue with teaching people what should be common decency. Bringing up Homer in this context though is extremely intriguing. Because truly reading those classics, not for the "Achilles was a max level fighter wit epic gear" but for the sociopolitical context they give us for the time, is fascinating. The Iliad especially (though later tragedies such as Aeschylus's Oresteia even more so) judges very harshly actions that we now explain away as "those were different times; you cannot judge them by today's values". It turns out, yes, you can. There is no denying that Cassandra is the most tragic character in the Iliad. She spurns Apollo and is cursed by him to see the future but have nobody believe her. She is locked away as a raving lunatic by the people she loves and tries to save. She sits helpless as she watches events that will lead to countless deaths, including her own. And the audience knows this. The audience back then knew that what Apollo did was wrong. Troy falls and Cassandra seeks protection in the temple of Athena. Ajax the Lesser rapes her regardless. The audience is on her side. It understands that rape is wrong. Perhaps wrong because she was a princess seeking protection of the goddess, where raping a slave girl would have been acceptable, but it is obvious rape wasn't just "just rape". As he isn't punished, Athena kills a lot more people than just him in retribution. Of course, that didn't stop the Locrians of venerating him as their national hero. Cassandra will later be murdered in Aeschylus' Agamemnon, first of the Oresteia trilogy of tragedies. Which incidentally has a lot to say about violence against women. Cassandra as the most tragic character shows that there was understanding for subjects we see as new now. Otherwise the audience could not have recognized the tragedy. But, as my pasta is getting cold, what I am getting at is: the classics have a lot to say about the matters we of the left are interested in highlighting. And they are not just a showcase of a more unenlightened time - these are matters that interested poets thousands of years ago as well. And they had something to say about the matter as well.

I just (9AM so 9 hours ago) finished Rythm of War (Book IV of the Stormlight Archives). Like all Sanderson books it is very well planned out. This alone makes it a joy to read: knowing that information is there for a reason and not simply to fill pages. Especially as there are nearly 1300 of those once more. I like that the story is constructed and build up through logical building blocks. While new information may be introduced, it never is the result of the author simply having a new idea and throwing it in there, disregarding what they had written up 'till then. True, I may just be happy that close to 2000 pages ago some information was introduced which had me go "Oh, that in one of the future books this will happen" and it now happened. I like being right. I also like feeling clever. On the other hand, I find every Stormlight Archives book manages to take a character and make their chapters tedious for at least half the book. While Kaladin was a great underdog hero in the first book, he became less enjoyable to read in book two. Now, his continued fight with depression has become easier to read - he no longer appears selfish, just in need of serious need of psychotherapy. And that works. Perhaps Sanderson has done some more research into depression and has a better understanding on the subject now. Still, the depression was always there, just not always communicated as well. Shallan on the other hand is now the character who really needs to truly evolve. Sanderson seems to be unable to properly write female characters. Or more than his signature female character. And as Shallan gets so much more page time than nay of the others ever got, the problems with this archetype show more. Women don't grow by pretending to not be themselves. They don't grow by making up fake personalities. It worked in Mistborn for Vin/Valette because she had to infiltrate high society and suddenly a whole new world opened to the starving street urchin. But it can't be copied onto every other female protagonist. Vin, Vivenna, Firefight, Shai, Shallan, they all merge into one character, with Shallan becoming the one who makes the reader (i.e. me) say "Enough already. Yes, young women try to find their place in the world. They don't do it by playing dress up as if they were a Barbie doll." What seemingly has been presented as character growth is an awkwardly written multiple personality disorder. And woosh, in book four of the Stormlight Archives, after torturing the reader for over 5000 pages, Sanderson acknowledges this. Shallan isn't growing, she is at best regressing, but mostly a nutjob. But the length it took to reach this realization makes me wonder if perhaps this is the one part that wasn't planned. That perhaps readers did write in all these misgivings I didn't air. The biggest hurdle to enjoying the book is, as in the whole series, the flashbacks. While the information may be important and give insights, it breaks up the flow of the story the reader is actually invested in. Worse, in this book the "one year ago" actually is the "now of two books ago. We have seen Venli being Venli at the time. We didn't like her. Nobody liked her. Yes, now Venli also doesn't like herself, but the rest of us don't truly need a reminder of who she is. What is interesting about the book is that the Cosmere meta-plot that bound most of Sanderson's stories together (Mistborn, Elantris, Warbreaker, Stormlight Archives, Emperor's Soul etc) is now merging into the main plot. Hoit is no longer a cameo sprinkled through the story in a Where is Waldo for the fans. It remains to be seen if this meta-plot, that has been building over so many years, will live up to the build up. At least Vasher says the truth in this book: "Hoit is an ****". Takes one to know one, Vasher.

Thank you. I don't seem to have the attention span for a title that long and missed it going through three years of topis